AbstractGrowing up in India makes someone simultaneously multilingual and multicultural. Further, a complex yet liberal religious worldview imparted could make one uber-sensitive to linguistic, cultural and spiritual comparatives. Migrating from such a background to the differently complex linguistic, cultural and spiritual landscape of Australia makes it inevitable that the mind starts viewing life from two different cultural vantage points, traverse between the past and the present lives, the Indian and the Australian personal realities. This experiential insight activates an eagerness to understand the prevalent cultural maintenance in both societies. This paper provides an exclusive personal perspective of Indian and Indigenous Australian cultural allusions and argues for the creation of common grounds for cultural cohabitation to seek intercultural understanding and to design cultural bridges.

About Ganesh KoramannilGanesh Koramannil teaches at the College of Indigenous Futures, Arts and Society at Charles Darwin University in Darwin Australia. Ganesh has worked in the areas of English as Second Language (ESL), Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), Linguistics, Literacy and English Literature for 20 years. He has worked in various parts of India and Australia. Over the last decade, he has worked mostly in the Northern Territory. Ganesh has teaching experience in Higher Education, Vocational, English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students (ELICOS) and High School sectors. His areas of interest include education, languages, cultural studies, Indigenous knowledges, English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EALD), English for Academic purposes in Higher Education, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy, Education Policy, ESL/ TESOL Curriculum and Pedagogy, Ethnic minorities and access to higher education. His research has had the perspective of an inquirer from an ESL background. His background as an ESL student, ESL educator, Cambridge ESOL Examiner, and his teaching practices in Higher Education, extensively influences his research interests. His current research investigates the impact of English language proficiency on Indigenous students from EALD backgrounds in accessing university education. Ganesh also has a keen interest in Indigenous and Indian arts and cultural domains.